March 2017 Minutes

Meeting of the Truman State University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP)
March 21, 2017, 4:30-5:30 PM, in MG1098
Present: Marc Rice (president), Marc Becker (secretary), Kathryn Brammall (Treasurer), Anton Daughters, Taner Edis (at-large), Mark Hatala (vice-president), Barry Poyner

  1. A student complained to the Title IX office about discussion of sensitive material in class, and Jamie Ball looked at faculty evaluations. The issue is cleaned up, but the question remains of how she has access to the evaluations? Who all has access to this information? Kathryn will ask Dean Clark in SCSS who has access. Do we need a policy for administration of faculty evaluations?
  2. Question of whether we can send AAUP announcements to facstaff email list. We’ll ask President Thomas.
  3. Meeting with President Thomas, next Wednesday, March 29, 4:30pm, in president office suit.
    1. Marc R. wants to start soft, and thank president for openness in process. At the university address, she announced that she would form committees to address how to respond to budget shortfall. We want to urge her to be more informative and frank.
    2. We need to ask about her salary. “Is she comfortable asking everyone at the university to make sacrifices, including students, while at the same time accepting a $30,000 raise.” Optics of increase in salary, and why don’t we need better salaries to attract better faculty.
    3. Faculty salaries: how is it that our salaries lag behind other universities? Structural inequality of salaries, including staff. Do you foresee a salary increase for faculty, for next or following year?
    4. What is our relationship like with the new political administration in Jeff City?
    5. Why don’t we hold people accountable for not raising admission rates? Why are our enrollments of POC down? We need a dialogue about how admissions work. “In order to increase our enrollment, we want to increase the diversity of our enrollment.” Reciprocal tuition with neighboring states?
    6. Retirement fund: Mosers has no international fund, even the global fund is 64% US. Limited options—can we have more possibilities? Who do we need to talk to about changing retirement fund assets we can invest in TIAA.
    7. What is your experience with AAUP? Our goal is to work cooperative, and we want an opportunity to explain what we do.
    8. Ask Tim Barcus to take a picture?
  4. Should we send our minutes to administrators?